Pools, DEXs and aggregators

Once a coin leaves the bonding curve, it trades on a decentralized exchange (DEX). On Solana you will run into a handful of names over and over.

Name	What it is	When you meet it
PumpSwap	pump.fun's own AMM	Most coins that bond on pump.fun
Raydium	Large Solana AMM	Older pump.fun migrations and many other launches
Meteora	DEX with dynamic pools	Coins whose teams add their own liquidity
Jupiter	Aggregator, not a pool	Routes your swap through whichever pool is best

AMMs in one paragraph

An automated market maker (AMM) holds two tokens in a pool, for example SOL and a memecoin. When you buy, you put SOL in and take tokens out, so the price of the token rises. The deeper the pool, the less each trade moves the price. A thin pool means big price impact: your own buy pushes the price up, and your own sell pushes it down.

Why you rarely choose the DEX

Trading terminals and wallets route your order for you. When you hit buy on Axiom or Photon, the terminal finds the pool and sends the swap. Jupiter does the same thing inside wallets like Phantom.

What you still need to check yourself:

• Is this the real pool? Scam pairs with the same name and image are common. Match the contract address.
• How deep is it? A $5K pool means a $500 buy moves the price a lot.
• Is liquidity locked or burned? For pump.fun migrations it is handled by the protocol. For coins launched elsewhere, the team may control the pool.

Other launchpads

pump.fun is not the only launchpad on Solana. Others come and go, each with its own curve and its own migration target. The basics in this archive apply to all of them: check the dev, check the first block, check the holders.